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Résumés

Abstract

The history of film sound has usually been configured as a series of technological
upheavals. In every case, the story has been told through technological innovations, as if
changes in technology were alone responsible for the development of new sound strategies.
The approach offered here differs markedly from these previous treatments of sound. Instead
of concentrating on technological shifts, this article stresses technical decisions made by
the soundmen and directors responsible for developing Hollywood’s standard approach to
sound. Through succinct analysis of two key films, The First
Auto (Warner, 1927) and It Happened One
Night (Columbia, 1934), along with briefer treatment of The Big Trail (Fox, 1930), a distinction is made between
“shot-by-shot” treatment of sound and “scene-by-scene” treatment of sound. The systematic
use of sound in It Happened One Night to establish
and maintain a coherent sense of place gives rise to recognition of the increasingly common
use of what the article terms “establishing sound.” Parallel to Hollywood’s familiar
technique of introducing each scene with an “establishing shot,” the use of establishing
sound offers filmmakers an additional method of locating auditors and maintaining their
relationship to the film.

Corps de l’article

How was sound film technology constructed by its many users when it was first
introduced into Hollywood mainstream production in 1927? The question is straightforward
and apparently simple, but the response is decidedly neither. Two obstacles impede direct
handling of this question. First, contemporaries rarely confronted this question straight
on. They didn’t talk or write all that much about their understanding of the new
technology, thus forcing us to read between the lines in order to grasp their attitudes
and proclivities. Second, we are not dealing with a single user, but with multiple user
groups and approaches. In order to analyze this or any other technology, a great deal of
interpretation is required.

For the purposes of this article, I propose to “read” the soundtrack of an exemplary
early film, Warner’s The First Auto (Roy Del
Ruth, 1927), in order to understand the various ways in which sound technology was
understood at the point when it was first introduced. Based on a story by producer Darryl
F. Zanuck, The First Auto opened at New York’s
Colony Theatre in late June 1927, some three months before The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927). Utterly fascinating because of its wide
variety of sound usage, this is a film that deserves to be far better known. In the pages
that follow, I will treat The First Auto as an
apt indicator of the ways in which Warner’s Vitaphone technology was understood when it
was first deployed. Careful consideration of The First
Auto’s sound strategies will then serve, in the second half of the article, as
an appropriate backdrop for further remarks on the ways in which understanding of sound
film technology changed over the course of the next decade.

When filmmakers first gained access to Vitaphone sound film technology, how did they
understand that technology? For the directors and sound engineers of the 1926-1927 period,
just what was sound? Or, to put it in another way, what sounds were needed or at least
considered useful in a cinema context? Surprisingly, this question is rarely addressed in
the discourse of the period. Not for several years would the film industry get beyond the
“techie gear head” approach characteristic of the Bell Labs personnel responsible for
developing the Vitaphone system. Engineers like E.C. Wente and Joseph Maxfield wrote
repeatedly about microphones, amplification and frequency ranges, but they are far less
loquacious about just how the new technology should be used. Filmmakers, including sound
personnel, have even less to say about their understanding of the new technology. Often,
the best witnesses are the films themselves.

The opening scenes of the Vitaphone version of The
First Auto offer useful insight. Over the title and credits we hear the
familiar tones of “In My Merry Oldsmobile.” No 1920s spectator could fail to make the
connection between the lyrics of Gus Edwards’ 1905 smash hit and the title of the film at
hand. In this film, sound means music, but not just any kind of music. Recalling a
long-standing silent film tradition, The First
Auto uses the familiar lyrics of a popular song to establish the film’s tone
and topic.

Once the race begins, a new model appears. Instead of recording the sound of horses’
hooves, the film’s sound crew has recourse to a familiar vaudeville representation of
horses running, where the sound of hooves striking the earth is represented by the
rhythmic pounding of coconut shells. And as in vaudeville, where the volume of sound
effects varies little, we find that a cut-in to a medium shot of sulky driver Hank
Armstrong produces no change in the volume of the horses’ hooves effects, even though the
larger image apparently places us substantially closer to the sound source.

Some thirty seconds into the scene, we cut from the trotting horses to the onlooking
crowd. Just as an image of running horses elicited the sound of running horses (as
filtered through vaudeville conventions), so an image of the crowd calls forth loud crowd
sounds. But it is important to note that the crowd sounds are heard not under or over the
race sounds, but instead of the sounds of the
race. Even though the race sounds could obviously be heard by the crowd in the stands, and
the sounds of the crowd would be audible to the jockeys, we hear only one sound at a
time—the sound associated with the image visible on screen. The sound seems tied not to a
location, but to an image.

Shortly, along with a medium shot of one particular spectator, his lips moving, we
hear a shouted “Come on Hank!” just before reading an intertitle that simply repeats those
same words. When the race ends, this process is repeated. As we watch a spectator shown in
medium shot, we hear a shouted “Hank wins!” But this time, instead of simply replicating
the spectator’s audible comment, the title asserts that “Hank Armstrong wins.” Why was
this mismatch allowed to subsist? And what lessons do this film’s intertitles hold for
us?

The handling of the very next scene raises further questions about the relationship
between the film’s sound and its intertitles. When Hank and his mare Sloe Eyes take a
victory walk through the bar, the sound design suddenly becomes unexpectedly complex. The
music replicates the opening credit strategy, appropriately matching the lyrics of the
familiar drinking song, “How Dry I Am,” with the joyful bar atmosphere. At the same time a
display of beer glasses is accompanied by the tinkling of glass. But when we focus on
Mayor Robbins, whose moving lips identify him as the speaker of a congratulatory speech
directed at Hank, we are not allowed to hear the Mayor’s words, but only to read them in
the form of an intertitle. Why do we hear an anonymous race spectator calling out “Come on
Hank!” and “Hank wins!” and yet not hear the Mayor pronounce his speech? For the time
being, it suffices to note that not all sounds or dialogue are deemed worthy of Vitaphone
treatment. The rest of The First Auto will help
us understand why this should be.

The next scene places us in the middle of what has become a cliché of American
filmmaking. A young woman and a young man are seated together in a public place, sipping
sodas and making small talk. Once again, we are not allowed to hear what they have to say,
but must instead make do with intertitles. They are interrupted by an unpleasant rival
suitor, who takes pleasure in showing his lapel pins to the seated couple. To the young
lady, he reveals a button proclaiming “I’m for you, Oh you kid,” while to his rival he
shows “Go way back and sit down.” Displayed in close-up images, these visual verbal
messages are the first of many in the film. We see several different newspaper clippings.
We laugh at a lettered storefront identifying the undertaker as one D.P. Graves. Along
with Squire Stebbins, we read a letter from his insurance company and then consult the
“General Instructions” explaining the modus
operandi of his brand new horseless carriage. We read Bob’s note to his father
Hank. For habitués of mature silent film, these photographed verbal inserts are familiar
indeed, for the filmmakers of the 1920s went out of their way to naturalize their
intertitles by photographing diegetically present written or printed texts. It becomes
increasingly clear that early sound filmmakers’ attitudes towards language and sound were
heavily inflected by their silent film experiences.

Whereas comedy scenes in so-called silent films were often accompanied by up-tempo
pieces connected to the narrative by their lyrics, dramatic scenes were typically
accompanied by music matched to the narrative by its emotional and tonal qualities. When
his mare Sloe Eyes dies in Hank’s teary-eyed presence, our commiseration is thus
encouraged by a Glazunov meditation and a Rimsky-Korsakov romance. Those responsible for
The First Auto’s sound are in this case clearly
doing nothing more than applying familiar silent film standards to the new technology. But
what happens next derives from no obvious pre-existing model.

Why are some words sounded and others not? Why, when Hank calls out to his sleeping
son Bob, do we hear him call “Bob!”? And why, once Bob awakens, is none of the subsequent
dialogue sounded? What notion of sound directs the sound engineers’ choices? What cultural
construction of sound justifies the sounding of some words, but not others? What prejudice
about the way the new sound technology should be used governs the soundtrack of The First Auto? A rapid census of the parts of the film
that are sounded offers an entirely unexpected answer to these questions. In addition to
the opening scene’s “Come on Hank!” and “Hank wins!” we twice hear Hank call out to his
son: “Bob!” Later, to start a race between Hank’s horse and a horseless carriage, we hear
Mayor Robbins call out “Go!” In reaction to Barney Oldfield’s exploit, pushing his Ford to
a mile a minute, one onlooker shouts “Hey!”

What do all these synch sounds have in common? They are certainly all speech events,
but we can hardly call them dialogue. Every time human speech is chosen for synch sound
treatment, the speech in question is short and loud, always calling for an exclamation
point. Indeed, a careful inventory of the film’s sound effects reveals that they too are
selected on the basis of their volume. Whereas relatively quiet sounds are rarely afforded
synch sound treatment, every loud sound makes its mark on the soundtrack: crowds shouting,
horses racing, automobiles speeding, whips cracking, plus shotgun blasts, car horns,
cranks and backfires, as well as the impact of a stone breaking a windshield. If we were
to write rules describing the treatment of sound in The
First Auto, we would certainly have to include a rule governing volume and
another governing duration. Rule number one would clearly state that only loud sounds are
considered worthy of treatment by the newfangled Vitaphone system. Rule number two would
identify punctual sounds—i.e. sounds with a virtually instantaneous attack and a rapid
decay—as especially suitable for Vitaphoning.

Why this prejudice towards loud, punctual sounds? In order to understand this
preference, we need to look no farther than the most common and culturally most important
use of sound technology during the 1920s, as well as the labels attached to the most
visible portion of contemporary sound systems. In fact, we still retain part of that
terminology today. Sound is transmitted to our ears through devices known then and still
often designated as LOUD speakers. This is hardly surprising, given the extent to which a
substantial portion of Vitaphone technology derives from the microphones, amplifiers and
loud-speakers designed by Bell Labs for their nationally famous post-war public address
systems.

Contemporary understanding of new technologies depends heavily on existing
practices. The technology may be new, but it is regularly used according to tried and true
principles and practices. In the case of The First
Auto it is quite clear that the sound crew understood the new system as an
amplification device, i.e. as a technology with decided loud-speaking capabilities.
Instead of attending to sounds of all sorts—dialogue, footfalls, bodily movement, and the
like—the sound engineers of The First Auto thus
used the new technology exclusively for what we might term “megaphone sounds,” sounds
produced at a high volume and destined to be heard at a substantial distance. Just as
early synch sound systems, from Gaumont’s Chronograph to Edison’s Kinetophone, were all
aimed at reproducing vaudeville acts and the phonograph records derived from them, so
The First Auto borrows its understanding of sound
technology from familiar previous uses of that technology.

Additional understanding of The First
Auto’s construction of sound technology is to be had from close listening to
the delightful sequence featuring Squire Stebbins’ wild horseless carriage ride.
Throughout Squire Stebbins’ wild ride, The First
Auto continues the silent film musical strategy heard earlier with “In My Merry
Oldsmobile.” For comic scenes we regularly hear an up-tempo popular song whose lyrics fit
the situation especially well. In this case it is the 1913 hit song entitled “He’d Have To
Get Under—Get Out And Get Under.” The lyrics say it all.

He’d have to get under—get out and get under—to fix his little machine

He was just dying to cuddle his queen

But ev’ry minute

When he’d begin it

He’d have to get under—get out and get under—then he’d get back at the wheel

A dozen times they’d start to hug and kiss

And then the darned old engine, it would miss

And then he’d have to get under—get out and get under—and fix up his
automobile.

Indeed, the darned old engine does a lot of missing. In addition to the sounds of
the creaky automobile body itself, we regularly hear backfires, semi-synch sounds designed
to take full advantage of the new technology. Full advantage? Well, yes and no. Throughout
this wild ride, every time we see Squire Stebbins’ car we hear the automobile’s
characteristic sounds. But every time the car goes off-screen the car sounds disappear.
Over the course of only eighty seconds the same pattern is repeated no fewer than eight
times. As long as we see the car, we hear the car. But as soon as the car becomes
invisible it becomes inaudible as well.

Throughout The First Auto, this rule is
followed: if it’s not visible on the screen, then it doesn’t make a noise that deserves to
be heard by the movie’s audience. Another particularly clear example may be found in the
race between Hank’s mare and a horseless carriage. As long as the horse and sulky (or its
driver) remain on the screen, we hear horses’ hooves. But when they disappear from the
screen, they also disappear from the soundtrack. Similarly, the automobile is heard when
it is visible, but it remains absent from the soundtrack when it is no longer in the
image. Only once, in a long shot featuring both modes of locomotion simultaneously, do we
hear both sounds at the same time. It becomes increasingly clear that sound is ineluctably
tied to the image—cued by the image, we might say. In this film, sound doesn’t have or
create its own space, because it exists only to the extent that the image calls it into
being.

Before we leave The First Auto, it will be
helpful to review the understanding of the new Vitaphone sound technology that it
reflects.

Influenced by silent film accompaniment strategies, The First Auto regularly uses music as it might have
been used by a pit orchestra just a few months before: dramatic moments are
accompanied by wordless light classical music that is emotionally matched to the
on-screen action, whereas comic moments are regularly accompanied by popular music
whose lyrics offer commentary on the action at hand.

Influenced by the vaudeville sound effect strategies that had already been
adopted by silent film drummers, The First
Auto eschews direct recording of sound in favour of theatrical production
of sound effects.

Influenced by the amplification associated with electronic technology, The First Auto systematically saves its sound system
for megaphone sounds—loud, punctual sounds that fully justify the term LOUD
speaker.

Influenced by the theatre, where actors most often abandon their right to be
heard when they go off-stage, The First Auto
never uses sound to create coherent and continuous sound space. Instead, it regularly
restricts its sound to on-screen sources, only rarely acknowledging the existence of
off-screen space.

The First Auto offers extremely useful
insight into the construction of sound as Hollywood adopted new sound technology.
Borrowing from a wide range of existing sound practices, The First Auto features a soundtrack that changes with virtually every scene.
Variety is everywhere in this fascinating film, but continuity is nowhere to be found. In
the years to come, some of The First Auto’s sound
strategies would be adopted for the new medium, while others would be permanently pushed
aside. In the space remaining, I will concentrate on a practice that would change
considerably in the years after The First
Auto.

As I have suggested, The First Auto does
little to create space through the creative use of sound. Working in close harmony, the
film’s image editor and sound mixer produced a soundtrack that is coherent in its
insistence on image/sound matching, but that matching is produced at the cost of
continuity. The film employs what we might call a shot-by-shot approach to sound, which
would last for many years before being replaced by a scene-by-scene strategy. Consider,
for example, this scene from the middle of Raoul Walsh’s The
Big Trail, a late 1930 super-production employing the proprietary wide-screen
process that William Fox called Grandeur. Led by John Wayne, the wagon train pushes its
way west, crossing parched deserts, deep forests and raging rivers. One of the longest and
most striking scenes details the pioneers’ descent to the base of an impressively tall
cliff. One by one, the wagons and animals are lowered with ropes, sometimes with
disastrous consequences.

The sound in this scene obeys an implicit rule just like the one governing The First Auto’s sound. When a wagon is on-screen, we hear
the wagon. When characters engaged in dialogue occupy the screen, we hear their dialogue.
What we don’t hear is whatever dialogue might be taking place while we see the wagons, or
whatever sounds the wagons might be making while we’re hearing the dialogue. Look at the
centre of this wide-screen image and you will be systematically satisfied by the
image/sound connections, because we virtually always hear whatever sounds are associated
with the screen’s “sweet spot.” Concentrate on the edges of the screen, however, and
you’re likely to be frustrated. Even though sound-producing activity may be taking place
on the margins, we never hear it.

The final twenty seconds of this scene offer an unexpectedly clear demonstration of
this practice. The final shot of the sequence shows mounted riders crossing a river right
next to the wagons and characters we have just been watching and hearing. Now, for the
first time, the soundtrack features water sounds. A river? What? Right next to the scenes
we’ve just been witnessing? Why didn’t we hear the river before? Viewers with eagle eyes
may have spotted the river in the distance of the opening master shot. But not until the
final shot of the scene do we actually hear the river. It is as if the microphone were
subservient to the camera: point the camera at an object or character and you have a good
chance of hearing that object or character. But any item not foregrounded by the camera
stands little chance of being heard.

It is important to reflect on the logic implicit in this approach. I have noted
before the extent to which this strategy operates on a shot-by-shot basis. Each shot has
its own logic, independent of all other shots, either calling for sound or not. When a
sound-making object goes off-screen, it disappears not only from the image, but also from
the soundtrack. In the real world, we often hear things that we can’t see. In fact, that
is one of sound’s great powers—the ability to represent the unseen. Indeed, our sense of
place regularly depends on our ability to hear things that we can’t see. We don’t live on
a shot-by-shot basis; we regularly hear things that are not immediately available to our
eyes. Not in The First Auto, however, and not in
The Big Trail, and for that matter not for the
first few years of Hollywood’s sound film era.

To understand just what is at stake here, we need to consider how—through what
sensory information—we manage to make sense of the space presented in this scene. We are
never totally lost in this scene, because we begin it with an establishing shot that
provides a context for subsequent larger scale shots. Whether we are looking at Wayne and
his friend or focusing on the cliffs and wagons, we easily fit the objects of our gaze
into a framework that has been provided by an opening shot that is so long and so wide
that all necessary spatial connections are guaranteed. But there is no parallel treatment
of the sound. The river sounds might have been featured from the start, thereby providing
a sense of sound space that could serve throughout the scene. But that’s not the way sound
worked at this point in film history. Early synch sound was characterized by a
shot-by-shot strategy in which the image—and never the sound—would be responsible for
anchoring us within the frame.

But this situation would not last forever. Though films made during the early
thirties typically continued to handle sound in a shot-by-shot fashion, changes were on
the way. During the early 1930s, a new approach was introduced that substantially modified
the role of sound in constructing space. Perhaps the most representative film of the
period, in terms of sound’s contribution to the creation of space, was Frank Capra’s
It Happened One Night (1934). With sound overseen
by Capra’s long-time soundman Ed Bernds, [1] this 1934 film offers an approach to sound that varies substantially from the
approach used in The First Auto, in The Big Trail, and in most other films from Hollywood’s
early sound years. It Happened One Night is the
story of Ellie Andrews, the rich heiress played by Claudette Colbert, who runs away from
her father and, eventually, into the arms of rebellious reporter Peter Warne, played by
Clark Gable. Shortly after swimming away from her father’s yacht, Ellie prepares to sneak
out of Miami on a bus, giving rise to the first of several scenes featuring a bus
station.

We’ve all been taught that the archetypal Hollywood scene is presented through a
familiar series of shots. First we get a long shot or even an extremely long shot, which
because of its ability to locate objects and characters in relation to each other is
typically called a “master shot” or an “establishing shot.” Thanks to the overall spatial
knowledge secured by the master shot, our sense of space is not undermined by the
subsequent series of tighter shots, even though they may be discontinuous. For example, we
never have the least difficulty understanding the spatial relationship between the
characters shown in a shot/reverse-shot sequence, because the establishing shot has
already clearly defined their spatial relationship. This, as we have all learned, is how
Hollywood handles—indeed masters—space. But it certainly is not the way Capra and Bernds
configure space in this scene from It Happened One
Night.

The first bus station scene begins with a close-up of a bus announcement, then
continues through a series of spatially unrelated medium shots and medium close-ups
featuring a bus announcer, Ellie Andrews, two goons tracking Ms. Andrews, an anonymous
older lady buying a bus ticket, a series of men gathered around a phone booth, and
eventually Peter Warne himself speaking on the phone, plus the editor on the other end of
the line. Outside of a few short pans and tracks the images offer us precious little
information regarding the spatial relationship between the various locations evoked. Where
is the bus announcer in relation to Ellie? Where is the ticket window in relation to the
telephone? Where is the telephone in relation to Ellie? Accustomed to being comforted by
Hollywood’s master shot practices, we would be nothing short of discomfited by this bus
station sequence if it weren’t for a new spatial strategy that has little to do with
camera location and shot scale.

The images in this scene offer limited information about the spatial relationships
that obtain between the sequence’s various close-up images. But the sound is a different
story. From the opening image to the end of the scene, the sound provides non-stop
continuity between what are otherwise discontinuous images. At every point along the way,
we are comforted by the background bus station sound. We know how each image relates to
the next not because we have been shown an establishing shot tying the various locations
together, but because Capra and Bernds have furnished us with what we might reasonably
call “establishing sound.” This establishing sound guarantees spatial continuity even when
the image fails to relate one space to another.

Whereas the scenes from The First Auto and
The Big Trail systematically handle sound in a
shot-by-shot manner, It Happened One Night
regularly treats sound according to an approach that we might call “scene-by-scene.” Each
scene offers a soundtrack that is double. Up front we have discontinuous dialogue and
sound effects, while the background features continuous semi-synch atmospheric sounds.
When we cut to Gable’s editor, for example, the soundtrack informs us that we are right
next door to a large room full of typewriters. Even though we never see that room, the
continuous background sound tells us it is there. Just as a visual establishing shot
guarantees the existence of space that is no longer fully visible in the subsequent
tighter shots, so establishing sound animates space even when that space is currently
invisible.

When Gable enters the bus we are treated to yet another aspect of this new approach
to sound space. Before we can see him, a pillow salesman begins his patter off-screen: “A
thousand miles is a long trip. Make yourself comfortable with a pleasant pillow.” After
passing behind Gable the pillow salesman continues to be heard after he has left the
image. A hallmark of this new scene-by-scene approach, the use of off-screen sound expands
space, activating areas that the image fails to represent.

The First Auto’s proclivity to megaphone
sounds, whether in dialogue or as sound effect, ensures that the film’s sound will all be
up-front, produced by a foreground character or object and characterized by high-volume,
low-reverb sounds. It Happened One Night operates
in an entirely different manner. In this film there are always at least two sound planes.
The foreground is dedicated to dialogue and narratively important sound effects, while the
background provides atmospheric sound. Systematically, the foreground thus uses
intermittent, live sound, characterized by a lack of reverb and close synchronization,
while the background sound is continuous and regularly endowed with enough reverb to
convince us that it emanates from an off-screen source. One further characteristic of this
background sound is its tendency to be at best semi-synch in nature. That is, the sound is
typically matched to its source in a general manner only. Instead of tight synch,
background sound offers only generic synch, as when we hear the sound of a crowd or
traffic noises. We know that the sound is coming from the crowd, or from the passing cars,
but we are unable to match up specific sounds with particular sources.

It is important to notice one other essential difference between the shot-by-shot
and scene-by-scene approaches to sound. When sound is handled in a shot-by-shot manner,
with all sound foregrounded, the only existing space is the space located in the on-screen
image. Treated scene-by-scene, however, according to the characteristic bi-level
foreground/background approach, invisible space is regularly activated. The importance of
this difference for diegesis creation and reinforcement would be hard to overestimate.
Whereas the sound strategies used in The First
Auto offer little support for a sense of diegetic coherence, the approach taken
in It Happened One Night provides a non-stop
guarantee of the existence and extent of the diegesis.

Throughout It Happened One Night, each
successive scene offers a new set of background sounds appropriate for each specific
location. This scene-by-scene strategy regularly deploys background semi-synch sound with
substantial reverb, in order to guarantee sonic continuity between spaces with limited
visual continuity. From the very start of each scene, the film offers sufficient
establishing sound to carry viewers (who are also listeners) from one shot to another
without ever sensing any discomfort. Sometimes the sound used to establish a coherent
sound space involves crowd noise. At other times it is the bus sound that assures
continuity. At the auto court, rain serves a similar purpose. Later, continuous sound
space is guaranteed by the sounds of a stream, followed by the buzz of night insects.
Thanks to regular deployment of establishing sound, the audience is never left to depend
solely on the image to assure spatial continuity. Each new scene calls forth a new
establishing sound, whose continuity throughout major portions of the scene lends unity
and clarity.

It Happened One Night is by no means the
first film to employ establishing sound. Several early 1930s films had already
experimented with establishing sound, including Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932), Alfred E. Green’s Baby Face (1933), Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living (1933) and Cecil B. DeMille’s Four Frightened People (1934). The Columbia films featuring
the collaboration of Frank Capra and Ed Bernds are especially rich in the use of
establishing sound, including Rain or Shine
(1930), Platinum Blonde (1931), Forbidden (1932), The Bitter
Tea of General Yen (1933) and Lady for a
Day (1933).

In order to understand the structures and techniques that characterize the treatment
of sound during the years following the introduction of synch sound into Hollywood
production we need an appropriate range of analytical tools. Perhaps the notion of
“establishing sound” will prove capable of contributing usefully to the tool kit that can
be deployed to make sense of film sound. Similarly, the twin concepts of “shot-by-shot”
and “scene-by-scene” treatment of sound offer further opportunities to analyze and
describe the development of standard sound practices.

Parties annexes

Note

[1]Ed Bernds handled the sound for every Capra film from Platinum Blonde in 1931 to Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington in 1939.